Reading The Material Notes

Reading The Material Notes

The Material World

Andy Warhol claimed "Good business is the best art".

What is the material world?
Monetary - Money
the idea of an artist as a brand/art as branding.

Material Culture
Material culture includes all things made by human.
Archaeologists use this term to refer to "concrete things" left behind by previous cultures.
Trying to read/interpret them to learn how they were organized or what they believed in.
Art Historians use this term when referring to an object within its environmental and cultural context.
Folklorists use this term to describe, culture made material. For example a stoneware jug and a plastic cup are used for the same thing but represent different ideologies.

Ideology - How society sees things

Postprocessualists
Wikipedia states that "Whilst recognising that past societies would have interpreted the world around them in a partially materialistic way, the post-processualists argue that many historic societies have also placed a great emphasis on ideology (which included religion) in both interpreting their world and influencing their behaviour."

The idea that we have been taught about previous cultures from a specific cultural viewpoint, that to understand them we have enforced our current ideologies and culture upon them, rather than trying to understand how their ideologies/faith might have changed our understanding is a new and interesting concept to me.

A 1976 UNESCO panel claimed that "Being depends on having". (Consumerism)

Traditional "old fashioned utilitarian craft may be a way of both fulfilling the need to enjoy our working lives and our need to take pleasure from the items that are in our homes. We could also make more sustainable items.


Material Culture can also be described as the relationship between identities and objects.

The mind is a body moving in space
is a conceptual metaphor.
We use physical/material words to explain metaphysical things, like feelings.

If our brains were separated from us (for example in a jar), we would not be able to process the world around us, as everything we experience is through the physical.

Rene Descartes
The father of modern philosophy
"I think therefore I am"

How do we know we exist?
Your mind does not follow the laws of physics
separate body & mind
Binaries
if you can think, then your mind exists.
You can't rely on your senses but you can rely on your mind.


Describing the indescribable

Descartes also suggested that the body works like a machine.

Skill Vs Clever Ideas
Malcolm Gladwell
talks of the 10,000 hour rule.
That you have to put in 10,000 hours then you can become skilled at something.
Creative grammar

accretion - learning the rules
omission - ignoring the rules
nihilism - making your own rules

Steiner George 2001

The idea of  knowledge transfer
the world of experience is multi dimensional
we live in a 3 dimensional world
Ernst Gombrich


Tacit Understanding
The idea of knowledge as an iceberg, that only 10% exists in peoples heads and that you can easily transfer to others. The other 90% exists in peoples bodies and minds that you cant describe or explain.

Ian Hankey
There is a necessity for the re-evaluation of tacit skills. People who work with their hands and hearts can’t act as they feel they should because that way of acting, that thing they know they should do, is not in the job description.  In modern society with technical rationalism as its dominant model of thinking, the working practitioner has no credibility or voice.
Tacit knowledge is far more complex than tacit skill. When a craftsperson such as a glassmaker is faced with new situations, we reflect on our experiences, using our skill to devise and implement a plan – a hypothesis to deal with each new situation or problem as and when they arise. In short, when faced with new situations, the craftsperson becomes a researcher in the practical context.
I took this directly from Mary's presentation. 

We see and understand things not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin